


Time Passes Slower Here

by chokeproof



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Dissociation, M/M, Self-Harm, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 23:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chokeproof/pseuds/chokeproof
Summary: A rundown of Patrick Hockstetter's day. Much of it is yearning for Henry Bowers.





	Time Passes Slower Here

Patrick’s world is uninhabited by human beings aside from himself.

He wakes up in the morning, pulls the first pair of pants and the first shirt off the top of the unfolded, clean clothes still in his laundry bin and goes on with his day. The ones who live with him are always up to no good. He doesn’t know why they’re here with him sometimes. They treat him like a stranger every single day, silence as he spoons the soggy cereal into his mouth and silence as he walks out the front door.

The walk to work is loud, the conversation Patrick holds with himself as lively as it has ever been. He asks himself what he must do for the day; his routine almost always the very same on the muggy summer days of Derry, Maine. Get up, work at the library from 9 to 3 (lunch break is at 11:35), have his coffee at the corner shop, go home and wait. The rest of the day isn’t up to him.

Patrick likes to work, it keeps his hands busy. He pulls his sorted cart through the aisles, shelving books and reorganizing the ones that are out of order. Occasionally he plucks an interesting text from the shelf, stands utterly still and flicks through the pages slowly until he grows bored of it. He doesn’t understand a lot of things, but he understands why all texts exist. He’s meant to learn. He’s meant to fill the empty crevices of his mind with new information, until all the gaps are filled. His job isn’t to answer questions, so when one drifts into earshot he remains silent. “Jackass.” Says the irritated whisper. He hasn’t done anything wrong, it must not be about him.

He has his coffee the same way every day; black. He likes the way it burns down the back of his throat and makes his stomach ache. Nothing quite draws the air into his lungs like it, he tastes the chill on his teeth. Now he can go home. Now he can wait.

Patrick is impatient. When his world isn’t moving fast enough; when he is interrupted, he becomes easy to set off. But oh he would wait any day for him. For Henry Bowers. He blows in and out of his life on a daily basis, like a hurricane he leaves everything around him in ruins. Where does he go? Why does he go? When will he be returning?

Henry never tells Patrick when he’s going to show up. He knows its between 4 pm and 6 but that is all he ever knows. When he shows up home from work, the strangers ignore him again. It’s for the best, he can’t waste his time listening to their voices in unison, droning together unintelligibly. It’s already 4 pm.

Patrick wouldn’t call himself lonely. He doesn’t crave the undivided attention of another human being, but FUCK his body feels like electricity when Henry lays his eyes on him. It crawls across the surface of his skin, sinks into his muscles, and penetrates his bones. He could live every single day on his own but he wouldn’t feel alive. Alone on his queen bed, his body tricks his mind into leaving it. He’s deprived, his body doesn’t appreciate the foreign places it goes at times. “The longer you go like this, the sooner you’ll disappear.” He tells himself, so it must be true.

Stocking feet hit the hardwood floor, his hands balling into fists. The cuckoo downstairs brings awareness to the fact that it is now 5 pm. “What will you do?” he asks himself, demanding an answer. “What will you do to stop yourself from vanishing?” But he’s trapped. He’s trapped in this room waiting and he cannot leave. The switch on his desk calls to him. “I can save you. I can bring you back.” And he listens, desperate. The tip presses into his skin but it is nothing. “Harder. Harder. HARDER!!!” the switch begs as it embeds itself into his skin and a scream rips from his numb lungs, but he cannot feel it and he cannot hear it. He’s trying he’s trying he’s TRYING but its not working. The hot red blood trickles down his arm and pools on the floor beneath him. The knife drags down his arm creating a pathway of fire behind it. The flames begin to consume him, its too late to save himself now. His long body topples to the floor, he curls up and-

“Patrick.” The snapping of fingers on and on in front of his still face are what save him of all things. He’s sat on his bed, in the very same position he was and had been, but his fingers now clench the blankets until they ache. “Hello?? I didn’t drag my ass down here to hang out with a corpse.”

Henry is of course, right. He always is. “Fuck off. I was thinkin’ ‘bout some stuff.” His first words of the day are not unwelcomed. The air is slowly poisoning him, but he would gladly speed up the process for Henry Bowers. He’s joined on the bed by that boy with a smile rarely so fond and Patrick accepts him, welcomes him into his world.

“What were you thinking about? I thought that skull of yours was fuckin’ empty.” What is he supposed to say to that? He was thinking of the madness being driven into his brain by his disconnected reality? That he was keeping track of every movement of the hand on his watch, every silent second that passed by him as if it was an eternity? Or perhaps how Henry’s lightning gaze turns him into a pile of ashes.

“About just when the hell you planned on showing up.” He announced with a twisted grin, his snake-like tongue peeking out between his thin lips. He wouldn’t lie to Henry, but he didn’t have to share the whole truth.

“Well I’m here now, aren’t I?” He is right again. Patrick’s world is uninhabited by human beings besides himself, and Henry Bowers. And maybe if he asked him nicely before he left, he just might ruin him too.


End file.
